1. Field of the Invention
This application is a nonprovisional application of U.S. provisional application No. 61/723,766 filed on Nov. 7, 2012, and is incorporated herein in its entirety by this reference.
The disclosed device relates to survival equipment. More particularly the device herein disclosed and described relates to a device for fire starting which is configured in a combination fire starter and tinder generation component with on board ignition components.
2. Prior Art
For centuries fire has been a critical tool in enabling humans to survive while living or attempting to survive in adverse environmental conditions. While some say water is the single most important requirement for survival, most survivalists will confirm that it is fire that allows a person to actually render water in the wilds potable, and without fire at night, a person will have a much harder time staying warm, as well as deterring predators who view humans as a meal.
Fire provides warmth in cold weather, light in darkness and, as noted, means to kill harmful bacteria and pathogens should a person, lost or surviving in the wilds, happen upon game for food and a water supply. Cooking food over fire to a temperature of at least 160 degrees generally will destroy pathogens, and potable water can be made from pond and collected water through boiling it.
In modern times, the ability to create a fire is often taken for granted. Access to gas powered lighters and chemical tipped matches, provides most people with a general sense of security should they need to light a fire. However, when suddenly positioned in the jungle, forest, desert or other hostile environments, during unexpected emergencies, people generally have no matches or other fire starting components in their possession, since they had not anticipated the situation.
In such cases of emergency, lacking any of the normally employed means for starting a fire, or when locations with restricted access to modern amenities, a fire starting tool can be a life saving device through allowing a user to more easily ignite combustible material they gather, conventionally called tinder.
A number of prior art means for igniting a fire are employed widely such as stick matches, fuel powered lighters, magnesium bars, and flint rods and the like. However, in order to take advantage of these ignition tools such as pyrophoric elements and strikers, tinder is an almost certain requirement to start a fire absent possession of fire accelerators such as lighter fuel.
In situations where a fire is required, be it an emergency or just individuals camping in the outdoors, tinder for starting a fire using larger combustibles such as wood branches, is generally gathered by finding local materials. Good tinder includes materials such as dry grass, bird nests, straw and other materials which have large areas of easily ignited surfaces. Once tinder is ignited, it is conventionally employed to ignite the main fire of wood branches, sticks of wood and other longer burning combustibles. However, there are many occasions and emergency situations where there is no tinder material in the general vicinity or where rain has rendered all the exposed ignitable materials such as grasses, un-ignitable since once wet they lack a large exposed side surface which easily ignites when combined with a spark or the like.
Prior at has offered some attempted solutions to such problems, for instance Patent EP0570175 A1 shows a survival tool possessing several components necessary for fire starting, including a storage receptacle to bring along tinder or matches for fire starting. However, the device does require the foresight to make and store tinder in the device to compliment any magnesium shavings and lacks any means to create tinder once the supply, if brought in the first place, runs out. In emergency situations, where local tinder is non existent or rendered unusable, to have some means for generating tinder similar to natural optimum tinder such as straw or bird nests, which are endowed with long exposed ignitable side surfaces which ignite easily with a spark and then burn hot for a prolonged period as the flames progress through the stringy straw or nest material.
Such elongated burning gives the fire starting user the ability to ignite the tinder and have the time to position the burning tinder next to the larger wood before it extinguishes. With the elongated material such as straw, dried grasses, or woven birds nests, such is provided. Having means to artificially generate such stringy material for tinder, at will, in combination with a fire starting component, would thus render the user's chances of repeatedly building fires for survival, much better than just having matches or flint and steel. Multiple uses to generate tinder is especially important even if there is local tinder available for a first fire. This is because the main reason a survival fire is extinguished is rain, which also renders all local tinder unuseable for a subsequent fire.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,698,068 teaches a survival knife tool that may be used to create tinder and contains fire starting tools such as magnesium and pyrophoric elements in a compartment. However, when local tinder is unavailable or rendered unuseable, creating elongated, thin, optimally shaped tinder with a small knife is not possible and additionally places the user in a dangerous position where they might be injured by a sharp blade which would create a dire situation if the user is surviving in the wild with no help for miles or for many days. In such an emergency or wilderness situation a knife cut or wound not only risks severe bleeding from cuts, it also creates a significant increase in the risk of infection, even with small cuts.
The main shortcoming in the field of fire starting devices, in the cited and other prior art, is the lack of components configured to safely and repeatedly generate tinder of optimum ignition quality which is well known to be thin material which has easily ignitable side surfaces and is elongated. The elongation is especially important to allow time for positioning the burning tinder to start the fire, as well as to provide optimum communication with oxygen in the atmosphere in the fire infancy stage. It is during this start up period where short pieces of wood and sticks and other kindling and tinder fail since they can expose bark or otherwise protected side surfaces and be short in length causing loss of flame due to lack of oxygen and too much smoke.
As such, there is a continuing unmet need for an improved fire starting device which combines current survival fire starting and survival tool components, with a tinder-generating element capable of creating optimally shaped elongated shaving and slivers possessing high surface area to volume ratios. Such a tinder generating component should be such that the user is not easily injured using it. Such a tinder generating component should easily be employed repeatedly and continue to easily generate optimum tinder. Finally, such a survival device in the noted combination, should be compact and easily carried as one self-contained unit to encourage carrying it even when an emergency is not anticipated. Finally, such a device should be configured with all the required tools for fire starting in various survival situations.